In Cuba last week, President Obama offered glowing praise to institutions in that communist country that did not deserve it. Obama called Cuba’s “system of education” an “extraordinary resource” that “values every boy and every girl.”

But there’s nothing “extraordinary” about the Cuban educational system. Children are taught by poorly-paid teachers in dilapidated schools. Cuba has made less educational progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years. According to UNESCO, Cuba had about the same literacy rate as Costa Rica and Chile in 1950 (close to 80%). And it has almost the same literacy rate as they do today (close to 100%). Meanwhile, Latin American countries that were largely illiterate in 1950 — like Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic — are largely literate today, closing much of the gap with Cuba. El Salvador had a less than 40% literacy rate in 1950, but has an 88% literacy rate today. Brazil and Peru had a less than 50% literacy rate in 1950, but today, Peru has a 94.5% literacy rate, and Brazil a 92.6% literacy rate. The Dominican Republic’s rate rose from a little over 40% to 91.8%. While Cuba made substantial progress in reducing illiteracy in Castro’s first years in power, its educational system has stagnated since, even as much of Latin America improved. Educational attainment is particularly lackluster among Afro-Cubans, judging from a recent New York Times story.

Obama also promoted the myth that Cuban health care is excellent, saying that the “United States recognizes progress that Cuba has made as a nation, its enormous achievements in education and in health care.”

In reality, Cuba has made less progress in healthcare and life expectancy than most of Latin America in recent years, due to its decrepit health care system. “Hospitals in the island’s capital are literally falling apart.” Sometimes, patients “have to bring everything with them, because the hospital provides nothing. Pillows, sheets, medicine: everything.”

Cuba lost the big edge in life expectancy it once enjoyed over other Latin American countries, as a result of communism. It led virtually all countries in Latin America in life expectancy in 1959, before a communist regime took power in Cuba. But by 2012, Chileans and Costa Ricans lived slightly longer than Cubans. Back in 1960, Chileans had a life span seven years shorter than Cubans, and Costa Ricans lived more than 2 years less than Cubans on average. In 1960, Mexicans lived seven years shorter than Cubans; by 2012, the gap had shrunk to just two years.

As the progressive economist Brad DeLong notes (he calls it “hideously depressing”), Cuba has deteriorated economically since the communists took it over, and lost its edge in health care over other Latin American countries in certain key respects:

Cuba in 1957 — was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland. Cuba in 1957 had as many vehicles per capita as Uruguay, Italy, or Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had 45 TVs per 1000 people — fifth highest in the world…. Today? Today the UN puts Cuba’s HDI [Human Development indicators] in the range of … Mexico. (And Carmelo Mesa-Lago thinks the UN’s calculations are seriously flawed: that Cuba’s right HDI peers today are places like China, Tunisia, Iran, and South Africa.) Thus I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution: “…to have better health care, housing, education.”

Cuba also is not the multiracial utopia some lefties claim. As the New York Times notes, “On an island that is around two-thirds black and mixed race, according to a 2007 study by the Cuban economist Esteban Morales Domínguez, the civil and public leadership is about 70 percent white. He also found that most scientists, technicians and university professors, up to 80 percent in some fields, were white.”

Under the Obama administration, the EPA celebrated the bloodthirsty Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, a mass murderer and torturer, as part of Hispanic Heritage Month, even though it turns out that Che was a racist and anti-Semite. Obama recently did a photo-op in Cuba in front of a big portrait of Che Guevara.

Progressives sometimes blame Cuba’s shortcomings on the U.S. embargo. But even Latin American countries racked by civil wars in the 1980s, like El Salvador and Nicaragua, have made more progress than Cuba. Nicaraguans had a life expectancy 17 years shorter than Cubans in 1960, but today, the gap is less than 5 years. The gap in life expectancy between El Salvador and Cuba shrank by 6 years between 1960 and 2012. An embargo by another country is a lot less challenging to deal with than a destructive civil war.

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. Hans also writes for CNS News and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”

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